James Roman's Blog: From the Author - Posts Tagged "non-fiction"

Imagine New York without Times Square: without subways, without taxis, crosswalks, or neon. Imagine no phone books. Imagine no taxes! New York in 1900 is an astounding chronicle, for no place on earth underwent such magnificent transformations in so many fields. It’s a study in microcosm of man’s progress in the Twentieth Century.

Surprisingly, much of what we lovingly call “Olde New York” actually arrived during the 20th century. The subway opened in 1904. The venerable old Plaza Hotel wasn’t erected until 1907. The first eastside high-rise, 998 Fifth Avenue, wasn’t built until 1911, the same year the New York Public Library opened on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. Despite these absences, New York in 1899 was viewed as radically modern; where inventors and entrepreneurs implemented new amenities affecting the lives of every citizen, representing America at its aggressive peak.

Real Estate
A century ago, New York was decidedly a Townhouse kind of town. The city still had 2000 farms occupying over a quarter of its land mass. However, those farmlands were rapidly being converted to urban residences, since the city was undergoing a population explosion like nowhere else in the world. The new immigration center called Ellis Island, which opened in 1892, admitted over 750,000 people into America each year, all of them passing through New York City (857,000 in 1903; 1.2 million by 1907). The demand for laborers was continuous, the demand for housing intense. As swiftly as farmland was returned to the city, real estate developers subdivided it into lots, simultaneously constructing contiguous homes for speculative purchase by the burgeoning middle class. Unlike downtown's old-fashioned brick houses, modern townhouses were built of brownstone from Connecticut, hewn in large blocks that could be assembled quickly. Townhouses were often sold prior to completion, as potential owners pored over catalogs with developers to select the final ornamentation of mantles, staircase spindles, and gaslights. It’s the way most of Carnegie Hill and the Upper Westside were constructed, in the years shortly before and after 1900.

Meanwhile, New York’s gentry flaunted their wealth by building ever-larger mansions on Fifth Avenue facing Central Park. The New York Herald referred to it as "a solid mile and a half of millionaire's residences," including the Vanderbilts, Astors, Havemeyers, Goulds, Whitneys; topped in 1901 by Andrew Carnegie with his 64-rooms at 2 East 91st Street. (It's today's Cooper-Hewitt Museum.) In 1905, Senator Elihu Root built Park Avenue’s first mansion (at 71st Street). Despite New York’s forward-thinking reputation, the moneyed set felt queasy when contemplating those newfangled apartment houses, where families were stacked above each other in common flats. Regardless, high-rise living at the turn of the century was a roaring success, with a residential high-rise at 34 Gramercy Park, along with The Dakota and the Ansonia Hotel in the Westside hinterlands, each considered the apex of modern living. Imagine having closets, toilets, a restaurant, and an elevator all under one roof! (Of course, those closets were utilized a little differently at first; the coat hanger wasn’t invented until 1902!) The introduction of steel to housing construction during the late 19th century shook the foundations of those moneyed mansions. In just a few years, that same Senator Root abandoned his manse to reside in the Avenue’s first high-rise, 903 Park. Awestruck New Yorkers watching steel girders reshape their world coined a new word for what they saw: a Skyline. A new era was dawning.

To be continued . . .

JR



Bibliography

Casill, Peter, New York Memories of Yesteryear, Exposition Press, New York, 1964.

Lyman, Susan Elizabeth, The Story of New York, Crown Publishers, New York, 1964.

Ellis, Edward Robb, The Epic of New York City, Coward McCann Inc., New York, 1966.

Tauranac, John, Essential New York, Holt Rinehart, Winston, New York, 1979.